1. Field of Endeavor
The information disclosed in this patent relates to heat recovery systems and more particularly to recycling heat by recovering clean heat from a clothes dryer, where that heat subsequently may be utilized in heating a home.
2. Background Information
Just about every house in the United States includes a clothes dryer and millions more of them are manufactured each year. Clothes dryers are very reliable, and very cheap to build.
In general, clothes dryers utilize hot air to dry clothes. The basic components of a clothes dryer include a rotating tumbler and a heater. The rotating tumbler holds the clothes and an electric or gas powered heater heats the air that is drawn through the wet clothes as they tumble. The hot air passing through the clothes heats up the clothes and the water in them. Typical clothes dryer additionally include an exhaust vent that passes out of the dryer and out of the house to permit the water to exit the dryer in the form of steam.
With temperatures dropping and electricity and home oil heating prices rising, many consumers are asking, “Why can't I vent my clothes dryer into my house so the heat that currently goes outside stays inside instead?” Presently, this is not a good idea for a variety of reasons.
Hot air coming out of an electric clothes dryer is full of lint, moisture, and dust. Breathing all that lint and dust just is not healthy. In addition, the excess moisture will condense on cold surfaces such as expensive wood tables and electronic equipment not in use. This free roaming moisture from the clothes dryer will cause problems other than damaging household items, including causing mold and aiding termites to damage wood. For gas clothes dryers, small amounts of gas vapor and carbon monoxide may be present in heat exhaust. Breathing in gas vapor and carbon monoxide could cause serious health problems.
For the above reasons, typical clothes dryers are connected to an exhaust duct that is open to the outdoors through a duct hole in a wall of the home. Porting outside the home heat generated by the clothes dryer is waste of valuable heat. An electric dryer consumes 220 volts of electricity to generate great volumes of heat for the drying process. By way of comparison, electric baseboard heaters also utilize 220 volts of electricity to generate heat for the home. As a result, every time that an electric clothes dryer is run, the consumer is venting to the outside an equivalent amount of heat as that generated by an electric baseboard heater over the same period of time.
As another example, a 4–5 person household may average eight clothes dryer cycles per week and thus eight hours dryer utilize per week. Over a typical six months of winter-like cold, this works out to 192 hours of dryer use. Even a two person household may utilize about 96 hours of clothes dryer time over the same period. These figures represent a huge amount of energy use.
In a typical home, the household heating system uses the most energy. However, other home services contribute to heating the home and help reduce the household heating system costs. For example, the water heater is second in energy use, whether the water heater is electric or gas. The water heater adds to heating the home as the water heater's heat largely is conducted into the home. Moreover, a water heater and the pipes servicing the water heater may be made more energy efficient through insulating blankets. The kitchen is third in energy use, but the kitchen too contributes to the heating of the home, with almost 30,000 British Thermal Units (BTUs)/hour. When utilized, kitchen appliances may provide a substantial gain to the home temperature.
The clothes dryer is a lone exception to the list of major home services contribute to heating the home. Except for some incidental radiant heat from the clothes dryer, the heat generated by the close dryer is almost completely lost outside of the home. Recouping the heat generated and presently lost by typical household clothes dryer configurations may provide substantial savings.
In view of the above, what is needed is an apparatus and method to overcome these and other problems.